Alza la testa (2009)

Antonio Mero is a skilled worker at a boatyard and a single father. His son Lorenzo—born from a relationship with an Albanian girl—is his only reason for living. Antonio’s dream is for the boy to become a boxing champion, thereby redeeming his own mediocre existence and his anonymous amateur career in his youth. For this reason, he trains him rigorously in an old warehouse converted into a gym, teaching him day after day to throw punches and protect himself from life’s low blows. Boxing is a sport in which you face your opponent fairly, and it is good training for growing up. In reality, however, what he has built around his son is a closed world, where every day passes in the same way, between work, school, training, and evenings spent with the friends from the boatyard, who have become a kind of family. It is a world steeped in regret, male camaraderie, and distrust of everything new and different. But the balance of this exclusive relationship is not destined to last.